


wider than the whole world

by tielan



Category: Calvin & Hobbes
Genre: Gen, Growing Up
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-12-17
Updated: 2017-12-17
Packaged: 2019-02-16 00:24:00
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,350
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/13042656
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/tielan/pseuds/tielan
Summary: He joins a hiking group because he’s looking for some adventure, and he can let his imagination wander along with his body.  Hobbes goes with him.





	wider than the whole world

**Author's Note:**

  * For [Windywords123](https://archiveofourown.org/users/Windywords123/gifts).



His mom is unimpressed at his decision not to do college, but his dad is okay with it. Probably because it means Calvin isn’t going to cost them college fees.

As it is, his webpage work is bringing in a pretty decent income, even if things are getting quieter now that the century has flipped over and the Y2K bug hasn’t destroyed all civilisation as they know it. Not that Calvin had to worry about any of that – his coding work is mostly websites and hosting platforms, and they’re recent enough that they were designed to avoid the two-digit year trap.

In his spare time, Calvin goes hiking.

The wilderness out beyond the suburbia of their neighbourhood was sold to developers a few years back, and a series of roads and houses have grown like fungus from what used to be fields and woods. And, sure, Calvin’s no longer six years old, wandering wherever he cares to at will with Hobbes – a boy and his tiger – but he went out there to get away from the boringness of his everyday life and now that he’s an adult, there’s a lot more boringness to escape.

He joins a hiking group because he’s looking for some adventure, and he can let his imagination wander along with his body. He doesn’t mind the people so much, they mostly leave him to his thoughts and his pace.

Hobbes goes with him; tucked into his pack – sewn into it, in fact, like a talisman.

_Watch where you’re sticking that needle! I don’t see why you have to sew me in here..._

“Look, did you want to come hiking or not?”

Hobbes doesn’t exactly roll his eyes, but there’s a distinctly injured air about him as he goes limp, and Calvin makes sure that nobody’s going to be able to rip Hobbes off his backpack whether in teasing or in spite.

As it turns out, taking Hobbes makes him a favourite with the girls, who think it’s cute. He downplays Hobbes’ presence as a talisman to the guys, but they don’t give him much flak for it. The kind of people who go hiking are already a little different – too busy looking at the world around them to worry too much about a guy who has an old stuffed toy attached to his hiking pack.

So Calvin and Hobbes go hiking throughout the Americas in between work jobs.

Well, sometimes it’s Calvin and Hobbes hiking the Grand Canyon, and sometimes it’s Spaceman Spiff and his sidekick Stripey staring at the striated red-and-orange rocks of an alien planet from the back of the grumpy, dusty Konbeest they captured and have forced to carry them across the inhospitable landscape.

_Stripey? Thirteen years in the American education system and the best you can come up with is ‘Stripey’?_

_Hey, it’s the American education system._

_Fair enough._

On the Appalachian trail, it’s Detective Tracer Bullet in a dingy little no-tell, calming down a sobbing dame so he can get the full story – a sad and woeful tale of a cheating boyfriend and the priceless heirlooms of her jewellery box. Of course, when the dame tries to come on to him in her distress, Tracer has to extricate himself gracefully. As low as he’s sunk, he doesn’t take  _those_ kinds of favors from his clients.

_You were pretty clumsy. I mean, not that you’ve ever been smooth..._

_You’re so kind to my ego._

_Well, that is what I’m here for..._

It’s even briefly Safari Al, hiking through Guanacaste National Park, Costa Rica, listening to the guide speak of logging and reforestation, renewal and orange peel compost, and dreaming of going places where no-one else has gone before, exploring lands that are rather less wild than Calvin used to imagine.

But undiscovered countries are a myth. As an adult, Calvin can see what his child self couldn’t envision – pretty much that wherever you go these days, humans have been. And all the lands that were labelled ‘discovered’ in his childhood history classes were already peopled by indigenous groups.

_Whose discovery is it, then? Can it be individual discovery, rather than representative of humankind? After all, animals have always lived there. We get around._

_Are you sure you’re not a philosopher and not just named after one?_

Back at the cabin that night, Calvin sits on the stairs and stares up at the stars with Hobbes leaning against his knee.

_There’s a lot of the world to see,_ Hobbes muses thoughtfully.  _I never realised just how much._

_Less of it, year by year,_ Calvin reflects as there’s a burst of laughter inside – the other campers, cheerful and boisterous, and most of them oblivious to the beauty and fragility of what they walked through today – after all, it’s been there for a million years; it’ll be there for a million more, right?

Calvin was never good at maths or science or literature or civics, but he was very good at imagining possibilities. And the truth is that the possibilities of the earth stagger him – and horrify him. So much being wasted, so much being lost, in some cases, forever.

So little he can do.

It’s all the more shocking when, on going home that winter, he discovers the suburbia that was in its infancy when he left is now a fully-fledged monstrosity, an angular slug of rooftops and gables that has absorbed the landscape, yard by yard, and is still swallowing a field off to the southwest.

He goes walking out in the twilight to survey the carnage, ignoring the warnings of private property and utility land as he hikes through long grass and scrubby brush, Hobbes still sewn to his backpack. It’s not a real hike without Hobbes, after all.

The demarcation of the new neighbourhood is very clear from the hill. The older neighbourhood shows patchy tiles and comfortably aged gardens with their untended trees, each plot bounded by the weathered and sometimes wonky fences of wood and wire. The newer neighbourhood is full of solidly-coloured roofs with no fading, crisp cream walls and gables, and the pristine yards of people who spend far more time watching television than they do working in the garden.

Someone’s coming, footsteps squelching through the leaf litter, and Calvin turns just as they break from the treeline.

“Susie.”

“Calvin.” She blinks at him for a moment, then seems to shake herself. “Oh yeah, Mom said you were coming back for Christmas.”

“It’s good to see you, too,” he says dryly.

“And you’ve got Hobbes.” Susie never let something as minor as ‘niceties’ get to her. As she draws alongside Calvin, she brushes a hand over Hobbes’ head. “Hey Hobbes. You’re looking pretty good. Could do with a bath, though.”

_I haven’t had a bath in years._

“Maybe Calvin can take you into the bath with him again.” Susie continues, oblivious to Hobbes’ comment to Calvin, who scowls as he flushes.

“ _I_ haven’t had a bath in years.” Calvin glares as Susie giggles. “You know what I mean.”

“I do. But it’s all verbal ammunition.” She huffs out a breath and stares out at the landscape, and her expression sobers. “Awful, isn’t it?”

“Dad’s thinking about moving. He hates the new development.”

“Yeah, your dad was always an outdoors type.” Susie slants an amused glance his way, her gaze skimming his jeans and sweater, the beanie and his well-worn hiking boots. “Looks like you turned out like him after all.”

“Except I actually like my job.”

“If you say so. So,” Susie shifts, “where to next?”

Calvin’s been thinking about his next destination. With everything starting to get cold again, he’s thinking somewhere warmer, with good hiking trails and hopefully some wilderness and national park to see.

“Hawai’i,” he tells Susie.

“Any particular reason?”

Calvin shrugs. He doesn’t quite know why Hawai’i. It just...was one of those ideas that sprung up. “Sense of adventure, I guess.”

_I’d like to go somewhere warm._

Susie makes a ‘hnh’ noise and tilts her head at him. “Wonga-Taa, King of the Jungle?”

He grins, surprised she remembers. “Maybe a little.”

 

**Author's Note:**

> In my head, Calvin goes to Hawai'i and meets a grown Lilo there. I just couldn't mesh the two worlds to my satisfaction - I'm sorry! Happy Yule!


End file.
